I Love Planning!

I just love making plans and scheduling things it is SUCH a gratifying feeling! I was stressing majorly about the cost of flights but after I just got over that and realized "ok it HAS to happen and it will work out one way or another" it made things SO much easier. I had to book my flight to Alaska asap, I was the last one out of our family to book my flight, even Drew's groomsmen had already booked their flights! So after a TON of research it turned out a round trip flight out of Rochester cost the exact same as it would for me to fly to CA, then to Alaska, then back to CA, then back to Rochester so I decide well at least if I fly through CA I will be able to spend time there and see people so that was a a pretty easy decision to make.

Today I decided that I want to order my dress in CA after all, I just have a bad gut feeling about ordering it here so I am going to listen to my gut and order it from a bridal salon in Sacramento or somewhere up in Nor Cal. I already know I will be in Nor Cal in early February for our open house/tasting at our venue, and will also be up there in May for my bridal shower, and will be able to be there no problem in June/July leading up to the wedding so being available and in town for fittings really won't be an issue. So I decided that since I have already bought my flight from Long Beach to Anchorage and back (roundtrip) I will just hang out for 4-5 days in So Cal once I get back from Alaska, then I will take a one way flight up North to order my dress and hang out with people up there! I will just buy a multi-city plane flight from Rochester to LAX then SFO to Rochester...it's the same price as a round trip from Rochester to LAX so this way I get to cover all of CA and see everyone I could possibly want to see, order my dress and possibly do other wedding stuff while I am there too! Kills a lot of birds with one stone and only cost $70 more for the one way flight from So Cal to Nor cal which is totally worth getting everything done that I want to get done. My tentative plan is ROC->LAX July 16/17, LGB->ANC July 19, ANC->LGB July 26th, LGB->SMF July 31/August 1st, SFO->ROC August 6th/7th. Then the following week after I get back in Rochester I am going to finally go see my bestie and little miss Harlow and I SO can't wait for that!

In other exciting news I officially decided to have a second engagement photo session, this time with our wedding photographer. She is SO amazing and I don't know why I thought I could get away with not having an engagement session with her. As I have posted before, I have been really wanting to have a "re-do" on our engagement pictures and now I get to! It will give us a chance to get to know Aimee (our photographer) better, get a feel for her shooting style, as well as get more engagement pictures and really be able to plan out the session,which I really didn't get to do the first go around. We decided to schedule them for February 1st and in case it rains since it is winter, we will have February 2nd available to do them too. Our open house/tasting at MVI is Sunday Feb 3rd. I figured since we are already going to be there for that let's do it during the same trip! This has been the way it goes for every visit back home since I am planning long distance. Do a little bit of wedding stuff with each visit haha It has worked out well so far! It takes about a month to get our finished photos back so that will be early March which will still give us plenty of time to get our Save the Dates out. I am SO excited to be able to have Aimee do our engagement session I can't even tell you. Her work is absolutely wonderful and I know I will be so happy I made this decision.

I LOVE planning all of this out! So far I have absolutely loved this wedding planning experience! So far everything has gone very smoothly, I am sure I will change my tune at some point,but maybe not. I love planning stuff so who knows maybe I will love it every step of the way! :)